Lachlan Fisher

Lachlan Fisher has a farming and visual arts background, having been a graphic designer and a farmer and sheep shearer. In 1988 he entered the world of creating willow cricket bats and found his passion.

Lachlan was a graphic designer when he started in the industry in 1988 answering a local newspaper advertisement: “Man wanted to work in workshop”. It had been posted by Colin Maddocks, of the famous Melbourne cricket family. Since then Lachlan has worked as a bat maker for over 15 years and has crafter over 12,000 bats by hand. He appreciates the weight of the willow, the performance of the willow, the style and the profile. He is the last full-time independent manufacturer in Australia, designing, making and selling hand-made bats. Fisher Bats is a premier maker of cricket bats known nationally and internationally.

In 1993 Lachlan founded his Fisher brand and established his company, Fisher Bats, and for 29 years was based in Kingsville, Melbourne. In May 2017 Lachlan moved to new premises in the country at Lismore, Victoria, where he continues to craft handmade willow cricket bats. In 1992, unable to satisfy his love of bat making using English willow alone, Lachlan expanded Fisher Bats to start producing his own Australian Willow in Gippsland, Victoria. He grows English Willow trees on his farm in the Macedon ranges, as well as growing them under contract on other properties in Victoria to ensure he has sufficient supplies for his bats, as it takes an average of 15 years to harvest a tree. Each tree can be cut down into about 32 to 40 bats, with Lachlan carrying out every step in the process from growing the tree to carving the bat.